More Milton

Here is some more Milton Freidman. It is incredible to me how clearly and concisely he can explain economic laws and consequences, it ways that were nearly impossible to deny:

Batman: Gotham Knights

I usually don’t let my inner geekiness’ on to this blog, but I couldn’t resist with these last two posts.

INDIANA JONES: AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Why is a Government Monopoly Acceptable?

Here’s a fact: Monopolies are generally bad at providing goods and services; a single payer health system is a monopoly, the worst kind of all, one that is enforced with guns.

Here’s another fact: Free markets have a tendency to produce diversity; diversity has a tendency to produce the best services and goods, and thus, the happiest costumers.

The economic justifications for Universal Health Care and Socialized Medicine are nonexistent; the superiority of free-markets is well established. Instead, proponents of socialization relay on old slogans (about the ‘rights’ of the sick), broad statements that are wrong and mean nothing (about how ‘nobody’ can afford care), substituting antidotes for evidence (‘my father got horrible care in America, then he went to Canada and was fine’.)

But most dangerous of all, is handing out irrelevant data as evidence; such as saying, ‘Canadians live two years longer then Americans, so their health care is better.’ In industrialized countries, the amount of healthcare received has little to do with the length of ones life, lifestyle and habits mean far more. Priests in the middle ages could live well into their seventies; often, a parish would have a life expectancy greater then America’s is today (the church kept very good records.) Are we to assume that the Middle Ages had a better health care system then today? Of coarse not; the priests lived that long because they lived isolated lives and avoided illness, they worked enough to keep them healthy but never were strained from physical labor, and they ate enough not to be hungry, but not enough to cause problems (such as obesity, diabetes, and so on.)

The only data one should consider are the objective measurements of a health systems wellbeing: Such as the time it takes to get treatment and tests, to see a specialist; the availability of drugs; the satisfaction of costumers; most of all, one should consider actual healthcare received.

In all objective categories, freer markets win out.

But the Michael Moore’s and Hillary Clinton’s never mention this, and that is what is so telling about there missions. If socialism is truly a superior alternative, then all evidence should support that fact; if so, then why haven’t they mentioned any of it? Why then, do they revert to the evasive debating tactics mentioned above?

I’ll end this post with an antidote:

America’s Health industry is already about half socialized; this includes the FDA, Medicade and Medicare, HMO’s, insurance restrictions, and thousands of other little things; about half of all medical bills are paid by the government. Because of this, there have been some very predictable shortages, raising costs in insurance, and a universal slowing of growth and progress.

All except one field of medicine: cosmetics.

The actual services provided by cosmetic surgeons in not significantly different then other medical fields, neither is the education required in by the surgeons. And yet, year by year, cosmetic surgery has decreased in price (a lower income person can now get a nose job), increased in quality (cosmetic surgery has the highest rating of costumer satisfaction), the fastest growth in innovative technologies, and the best business plans (which results in lower costs.)

As I said, there is no significant difference between cosmetic surgery and other medical fields; except for one thing: government involvement. Compared to other fields of medicine, cosmetic medicine has nearly no government involvement in its business.

The conclusions drawn from this are simple; governments (and all monopolies) are bad at allocating goods and services, that has been proven over and over again in thousands of fields, medicine is no different.

Keep in mind that this is not just an argument about our health; it is for our very freedoms. Our right to get care where we choose, our doctors rights to provide care in a way they wish, an insurers right to provide a service, and my right to purchase it.

The ramifications on freedom are great; it is this issues above all others that should be the focus of this debate.

The fact that it’s not makes my usually optimistic self worry about the future of this county, and those that live in it.


I found this at Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Meet King Joe

I had to watch these in animation class, and it just so happens that a person on a forum I frequent posted them. They explain, in a very simple way, the fundamentals of some economic concepts.

I love these videos, there simple and eloquent; if a bit outdated (there are some scenes some might find sexist or mildly racist.)

The link to the website that hosts these videos is here. Below is a sample, called Meet Joe King:


Here are some easier to watch youtube videos:

Why Play Leap Frog

Going Places

Make Mine Freedom

In which I learn how to photograph stars, and ponder the definition of ‘travel.’

First I have to establish one thing: How far do I have to be from home before I consider it travel?

Is it distance, time spent moving from place to place, is it an emotional state of being ‘far from home, or something else all together? How about one-hundred yards? Because that is the distance I was from my home when I took these pictures.

Well, this is my fist post on my own travels, so I suppose I could start with baby steps; really tiny baby steps, granted, but baby steps none-the-less.

Oh, and for those of you who are reading my blog (which according to my hit counter, is no one) I will tell you how to take these photos.

Take your camera, which must have ‘bulbus’ mode, outside (as there are many more stars out-of-doors); it better if you do this at night, but I won’t boss your around.

A tripod is absolutely necessary. Its best to use a 50mm lens if you have one, though a zoom will work just fine, just pull back a little. Turn off any autofocus features. Put the Camera in Manual mode (M.) Now, turn the speed of the camera to ISO 400, and then set the aperture to the lowest f-number (there is usually a little wheel on the camera that controls this, just spin it until the display says ‘bulb’.) Though it is not necessary, if your camera has long-exposure noise reduction, turn it on. With these settings, the camera will expose a shot for as long as you hold down the exposure.

From there, just point the camera at the stars, make sure they are focused, and snap; a five second exposure is about right for this.

I use a digital camera, I think film would work to, though I hear it is hard to get high-enough quality prints.

By the way, I find that the amount of stars that I can see with the naked eye has little to do with the quality of pictures I get; the best time to shot seems to be between 12:00am and 3:00am.

Well, this wasn’t the most groundbreaking of first posts, but hey, it was something. I’m sure Marco Polo, or Columbus, or Sir Francis Drake started slow to.

P.S. – With these same camera settings, a person can do some fun things. For instance, write their name in thin air. Just take a small light (LED works great) get in a dark or semi dark place, and start exposure, write whatever you want, and then stop exposing the picture; when it comes out, there should be a light show of wherever that light was during exposure.

These setting are also good for things like night traffic, and running water.

Port City

By: Michael Anissimov

Westboro Church

I fully support freedom of speech and association, but that doesn’t mean I support anybody’s right to say and do anything anywhere.

Perfect example: The Westboro Church.

It’s like every irrational and contemptible idea on the planet was squashed together into one. They are anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-freedom, pro-blind faith; the list goes on. But it is not just their ideas that make them evil, it’s how they go about spreading them.

For those who don’t know, it is Westboro church that protested at soldier’s funerals, proudly holding up signs, “Thank God for Dead Solders”, and clapping when they where lowered in the ground (a women reported that she couldn’t even hear the eulogy because of these people.)

They are also “anti-gay”, often finding where gay couples or families live and harassing them.

In fact, there latest act in a long list of sins, they plan to go to Heath Ledgers’ funeral and protest because of his role in “Brokeback Mountain.”

They are so absurd, I almost have to believe they are a joke, to make other Christians look bad.

I will say, there are those who posses the same ideas of these people, and behave maturely, and even respect other people. Westboro church respects nothing. If it’s even possible; they seem to lack any redeeming qualities.

And I don’t even need to say, if you spend a significant portion of your life devoted to what you hate (which these people do), you’re missing out on life. Hate is all these people seem to have.

Yes, I support freedom of speech and association; but I don’t support assault, slander, or the violation of property rights. Let these people speak on there own land, or where they are invited; but when they force themselfs onto others land, point a microphone directly into somebody’s ear, or harass a person; they have stepped out of the realm of the First Amendment, and into the realm of assault.

The Westboro Churches’ right to speech doesn’t give it the right to violate another’s property and persons.

But there are cases where this group did peaceably assemble, and even though I support there right to speak in these instances, for the sake of class, and dignity, I wish they would shut-up. Supporting freedom doesn’t make the rants of the Ku Klux Klan or Westboro church any less contemptible.

Nothing I could say would be as damming as their own words. Here is a reporter from the BBC that interviews several of its members.

A Thought on the Carbon Tax

Let’s say that the entire world, with the exception of the United States, stops eating chocolate; what would then happen to the price of chocolate in the United States? It would naturally fall, and then come up slightly. A decrease in demand causes an increase of supply, which lowers prices; prices stay low, and demand increases, causing a slight rise in prices (though rarly reaching what it was before.) This is the most basic of basic economics.

In the same sense, what will happen if the United States puts a ‘carbon tax’ into place, or even bans fossil fuels all-together?

The fervent environmentalist, or the silver-tongued politician, would hail this as a small triumph to achieve there eventually goal of environmental utopia and harmony. And in a certain sense they are correct, there would likely be less carbon based pollution within the United States.

Unfortunately, the reality of economics doesn’t bend so easily.

By increasing prices within the U.S., it makes it cheaper for everybody else. Counties with extremely fast rates of growth, like China or India, will gladly buy up what we don’t. Instead of India investing in cleaner nuclear power, it will instead use bargain basket fossil fuels

And contrary to popular belief, freer countries are actually less pollutant then ones that don’t protect its citizen’s rights. In China, there is no protection if your property is violated, nobody to complain to, no real legal system to work in; in countries where lives are disposable and property unprotected; there is nothing to stop pollution.

In America, excess pollution is stopped by the protection of property rights, and natural market forces.*

Ironically, a carbon tax is likely to increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Though this fact is not likely to deter the environmentalists; anybody with basic reasoning skills could realize the impracticality of any kind of carbon tax.

That’s because what is being proposed now in the name of protecting the environment is not unique to this generation. The same controls were proposed in the 1930’s and 40’s, when socialism was all the rage; it was in a large part implemented during World War II (though there was some validity to this); during the Korean and then Vietnam wars; The “gas crisis” of the 1970’s; in the U.K., global cooling (in large part promoted by the Thatcher government) helped create controls; Then global warming and now climate change perform the same task. Every generation has different justifications for what is essentially the same thing.

This is because modern environmentalism is not pure; it is an expression of a failed political movement and a dying philosophy. When the ‘practical’, or even the ‘moral’, justifications for political control fell away, environmentalism was one of the few surviving ideologies that could support those creeds.

And it was glad to pick up the cause.

Any ‘climate change’ legislation essentially boils down to one thing; artificially raising the cost of fossil fuels. The legislation could complicate this process, but that’s about it.

And just like chocolate, any economist (or reasonable person) can predict what will happen if a part of the world stops consuming a valuable commodity.

This demonstrates how even the most simple of concepts (like supply and demand) can be buried under the weight of bad ideas and clumsy rationalism.

- Ryan

* There is strong evidence to suggest that when a country first begins to industrialize it produces most of its pollution, and when it reaches a certain point, the pollution begins to decline.

And it’s not hard to see why, priorities change with abundance; if my family is dying of hunger, I don’t worry about the plight of the buffalo or protecting national parks.

When a society can ‘afford’ to be clean, it naturally becomes cleaner. This is well demonstrated in the American society. We have more trees, cleaner rivers and lakes, and cleaner air then we’ve had in more then a hundred years. There is even a decrease in the use of carbon (or rather, how clean it is) over the past ten years.

Contrary to the popular myth, free markets are actually better for the environment then there statist alternatives. Russia and China produce an absurd amount of toxins, even those countries that signed the Kyoto protocol have been getting worse (in the countries that signed, carbon use has increased 4 percent.)

Yet again, freedom has proven itself superior.

Space Ship Two

Virgin Galactic announced the first commercial space craft to lift off soon. They should start in late 2009, with the first test flights around june of this year.

This is pretty exiting news, it means more then just Backstreet Boys and aging politicians can soon make it into space (for a substantial amount of money.)

There are even plans for an inflatable space hotel, which will orbit the planet and offer longer stays in space.

Does this represent the dawning of the new age of space flight? Maybe. But I think if private space is to become common, we are going to have to find a more practical application then just tourism.

If nothing else, it shows private industry is vastly superior to government-run programs when it comes to cost effectiveness, practicality, innovation, and even safety.

The link to their site is Here.

Below is an animation created by Virgin Galactic:

'What to Expect When You’re Free Trading'

Here is a good Op-Ed by Steven E. Landsburg published in The New York Times.

I wish he went into more detail, but he still underlines the main conflict in “protecting” American jobs; that no matter which way you cut it, if the government is involved, it involves force.

Sadly, because of the general ignorance of basic economics, no candidate can go on the record and say that it’s not worth it, and wrong besides, to keep American jobs at the cost of freedom and greater prosperity; not that any candidate would say this, even if they could.

Very few recognize that “keeping jobs” involves forcing decisions out of people, decisions that they would presumably not prefer; after all, the only reason the government would need to protect a job would be if it no longer provide the best value to other people.

When politicians talk about “protecting America’s workers” they are talking about holding up a market that people no longer desire, or useful has expired.

In New Jersey, there is a law that says that person cannot pup their own gas (I don’t know if this is still on the books.) This was instituted under the same backwards logic as the protectionist policies above. What few realize is: sure, you have more jobs at gas stations, but at the price of more expensive gasoline.

Most people, given the choice, would prefer to save money and pump their own gas; but by law they can’t.

By spending money on a service they didn’t want, they take money away from where it should have gone; that is, precisely where that person wanted it to go based on there own desires.

Little controls like this add up, and eventually, billons are lost in investments that never happened, or products that were never bought; industries that were never born.

Imagine what would have happened to this country if the government tried to protect carriage makers, at the cost of the automobile or the train; or the steam engine, at the cost of internal combustion; or tried to protect domestic electronic manufactures from foreign competition, at the cost of satellite and pharmaceutical research (and they ARE connected.)

What’s ironic is that these policies produce little of the benefits they promise, and many times result in a lower standard of living.

I hope people realize this before the government controls all our decisions in the name of “protecting America’s workers.”

“An Idea Is A Greater Monument Then A Cathedral”

While the movie Inherit the Wind has very little to do with the trial it was based on, it still expertly demonstrates and dramatizes the underlining battle of ideas that went on there.

Art can be seen as a reflection of culture; a collage of its dominant ideas and conflicts. Watching the clip below, I'm surprised how different movies where back then; sure, they lacked the subtlety and finesse of modern movies, but there was little of the vagueness and that certain evasive relativism that’s hard to define.

While movies are more technically brilliant then they ever where, in many ways they are much more cowardly; even those movies which are supposedly “cutting edge” or “controversial” stink of this same vagueness, the same fear, the same unwillingness to commit to anything they say. In the end, they only end up being offensive, and even at that they mostly fail.

A movie about a child molester (The Woodsman) ends up saying nothing, even committing to a solid picture of the character. A movie that explores racism without ever exploring racism (Crash.)Vague pseudo-philosophical rhetoric that attempts to be “deep” (The Matrix sequels.) And a movie that plays with, but never commits to, the idea of fate and God (I am Legend.)

All these movies are a testament to our time, to the post-modern, anti-ideas that have become almost entirely dominant.

Well, below is a movie that has none of that vagueness, whose characters declare exactly what they believe in, and why.

I have to say, it’s refreshing:



There is another good clip here.

Brilliant Video on Economics: A tribute to Milton Freidman

This is great; I don't even have to say anything, it speaks for itself.

Without further ado:



I also found this at Café Hayek.

Another Reason to be Happy and Optimistic

It seems, counter to what many would claim, wealth in this country is growing, not decreasing; and despite the proclamations of Lou Dobbs and the like, the middle class is doing quite well.

Just read at this quote from Walter Williams:

"Controlling for inflation, in 1967, 8 percent of households had an annual income of $75,000 and up; in 2003, more than 26 percent did. In 1967, 17 percent of households had a $50,000 to $75,000 income; in 2003, it was 18 percent. In 1967, 22 percent of households were in the $35,000 to $50,000 income group; by 2003, it had fallen to 15 percent. During the same period, the $15,000 to $35,000 category fell from 31 percent to 25 percent, and the under $15,000 category fell from 21 percent to 16 percent. The only reasonable conclusion from this evidence is that if the middle class is disappearing, it's doing so by swelling the ranks of the upper classes."

I found this at Café Hayek.

“New Math” Put In Its Place

When I lived in Nevada, I suffered through this “revolutionary” math systems with my sister’s homework.

The process was cumbersome, complicated, and unintuitive. Often, “new math” didn’t produce the correct answer; a ton of special rules needed to be created to solve the flaws in the process (though, for the record, I am in favor of teaching different base systems; but not as a replacment for base 10.)

Well, I’m glad people are starting to catch on, and are realizing that a new system is not necessary a better one.

Below is an entertaining video that lays down the convoluted process of “new math” subtraction. I love it when he says, “In the new approach, as you know, it is more important to understand what you are doing then to get the right answer.”



It is connected to the dryer but more informative: Math Education, an Inconvenient Truth

-Ryan

P.S.---I also like this guys rendition of the elements Here.